F or those of us who have been around a while, the new push to regenerate cities with innovation districts appears like yet another fad. But is it? Clearly, Brookings, the major proponent of the shift doesn’t think so.

All of these ideas been pushed as a way to revitalize cities. Some of them had value, others not so much.

But what about innovation districts? After all, isn’t that what we want? Dynamic downtowns, anchored by edgy, high-growth businesses, all catering to employees interested in living in 24/7 mixed use, live/work districts.

Sure. But the challenge is not so much in describing the What. It’s figuring out the How.

Years ago, small cliques of men dominated the political economy of most cities. Not anymore. Now, transformation takes a small army of civic entrepreneurs and willing volunteers working together. The trick involves designing and guiding the collaborations within loosely joined networks.

The first step in any transformation involves shifting your mental models from hierarchies to networks. Transformation takes shared, distributed leadership. It’s not about searching for disruptive innovation. It’s about organizing for swarm innovation. Innovation districts emerge from investments in underlying collaborations.

Some of these collaborations are publicly-led and privately supported. Others are privately-led and publicly supported. Transformation demands both.

You can think of assembling a portfolio of collaborations. A competitive and dynamic local or regional economy needs brainpower 21st-century skills; the networks to support entrepreneurs and innovative growth companies; quality, connected places, because both people and firms are mobile; and new narratives to guide people toward the future you are designing and developing. (See the Asset Strategy Map in the right column or look at a more detailed version here.)

From these core collaborations, all of the dimensions of an innovation district will emerge: creative, talented people; new start-ups and high growth businesses; dynamic clusters; and innovative hot spots that attract both people and firms. In developing an innovation district, especially at the early stage, coherence and alignment are more important than vision.

Rule 3: Create shared value by linking and leveraging assets

Some years ago, two really smart community developers at Northwestern University developed the asset-based approach to community development. There are a lot of reasons why this approach works particularly well in open, loosely joined networks. It comes down to this: We can mobilize people in these networks far more easily by focusing on our assets, rather than trying to define our problems.

Regenerating an economy is a wicked problem with no clear definition. So let’s stop trying to define the problem. We will only understand the problem as we devise solutions. In other words, we must relentlessly experiment. Only then will innovations emerge. By focusing on assets, we move past the endless cycle of conversations leading nowhere. We move to a higher plane of thinking about sustainable collaborations. We begin to focus on creating shared value from accessible assets.

Rule 4: Follow a lean, low-cost and teachable process for designing your collaborations and making quick adjustments as circumstances change.

To enable collaboration spread across organizational and political boundaries – – to achieve scale – – you need a simple strategy process or protocol. Strategic Doing builds collaborations quickly and move them toward measurable outcomes. It provides a simple process for making adjustments.

Are innovation districts for real? Let’s hope so.

Innovation districts represent a set of hypotheses, not a formula. If they really are the transformation that Brookings foresees, they will have to be replicated, scaled and sustained.

That, in turn, will depend on how many of us can dive into the messy challenges of designing and implementing complex, sophisticated collaborations. There are no lighted highways ahead, only promising game trails. We will need to explore while we go, moving from ideas to action and back again.

Thinking and doing are no longer separated. The only way to define a strategy is to do a strategy. The good news is that Strategic Doing – – a simple, low-cost process that people can easily learn – – generates the evidence we need to design the future we want.

One last point: The transformation in Oklahoma City started really showing momentum about 6 or 7 years into the process. (That includes about 2 years during which the city recovered from the bombing.) In Charleston, the launch of the Digital Corridor started gaining momentum after about 5 years. In short, the development of an innovation district takes time, certainly longer than an election cycle of two or four years.

About Ed Morrison

Ed Morrison is Director of the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia.
For the past five or six years, he has been developing new, agile approaches to strategy in open, loosely joined networks, a discipline he calls Strategic Doing.
Prior to starting his economic development work, Ed worked for Telesis, a corporate strategy consulting firm. In this position, he served on consulting teams for clients such as Ford Motor Company, Volvo, and General Electric. He conducted manufacturing cost studies in the U.S., Japan, Mexico, Canada, Italy, Sweden, and France.
Ed started his professional career in Washington, D.C., where he has served as a legislative assistant to an Ohio Congressman, staff attorney in the Federal Trade Commission, and staff counsel in the US Senate. He holds a BA degree cum laude with honors from Yale University and MBA and JD degrees from the University of Virginia.

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Mapping your strategy for the knowledge economy

Developing a prosperous economy is challenging...and can be very confusing. A strategy map helps. The basic idea behind this strategy map is that a competitive economy is built on a portfolio of investments.
We need...
1) brainpower with 21st Century skills, because brainpower is the core competitive asset that drives most markets;
2) innovation and entrepreneurship networks to convert brainpower into wealth;
3) quality, connected places, because both smart people and innovative companies are mobile; they will only be attracted to quality, connected places;
4) new narratives to guide people and resources toward new opportunities; and
5) collaborative skills that can be learned through Strategic Doing.
Using this map as a starting point can guide the development an effective strategy for a neighborhood, community or region. The content on this site aligns closely with this map.